Crossword blog: cryptics in America

As the UK closes down for the Olympics, it's time for a trip abroad to see how they take their crosswords there. First stop: America, where cryptics are harder to come by. One source is the Nation, sometimes called "the flagship of the left"; the New York Times describes "conservative Republicans who [hold] their noses" as they buy the magazine for the puzzle.

Nation setter and former codebreaker Frank W Lewis recently died after more than six decades of crosswords. His fans included Kurt Vonnegut and Leonard Bernstein and his successors - Joshua Kosman (Trazom) and Henri Picciotto (Hot) - have a natty line in smooth and witty clues; I've been following their work at their Word Salad blog. Let's talk puzzles.

So, Hot: how did the pair of you become the new setters for the Nation?

We met maybe 25 years ago, at a word puzzlers' party, and about 16 years ago started our collaboration as cryptic editors for The Enigma, the National Puzzlers' League monthly magazine. In that capacity, we have worked with many leading US constructors (as we call them over here) and helped to train many beginners.

In the UK, with the exception of innovations like the Guardian Quiptic and devilish weekend puzzles, we have broadly two kinds of puzzle: quick and cryptic, both with black squares. But it's different in the US, no?

Well, in US-style crosswords, there is a range of difficulty, with the New York Times setting the pace among the high-quality puzzles - the range is from straightforward on Monday to very difficult on Saturday.

There is an abundance of such puzzles, sometimes with interesting twists. A recent NYT puzzle by Tracy Gray had the theme RIGHT TURN ON RED (a US traffic rule). CHEERED ON, for example, was entered with CHEER going down, and then making a right turn with RED ON entered across.

Unfortunately, US-style crosswords are not cryptic. The only overlap is the occasional cryptic definition, as you know them in the UK.

So where can Americans in search of a cryptic challenge get their fix?

· The monthly bar-diagram puzzle by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon in the Saturday Wall Street Journal (example here). The difficulty varies, but never reaches the level of the Listener. Their cluing is flawlessly elegant, and has set the standard for most US setters.

· As for black-square cryptics: there is one every few weeks in the Sunday New York Times, and Games Magazine carries them in every issue. Alas, those tend to not be very interesting to experienced solvers, unlike the black-square puzzles you write about on this blog.

· And of course there is our weekly puzzle, in the Nation. This one is only available to subscribers.

With 68 years since the previous change of guard at the Nation, and without a pre-existing national scene across the papers, do you feel you're able to establish a world of cryptic crosswording as you fancy?

Well, we're trying!

While we're generally square-dealers, we feel that a weekly black-square puzzle that will retain its appeal to experienced solvers needs to be a little more freewheeling than is traditional in the US, needs to include themed puzzles on occasion, and needs to prioritise entertainment over an obsession with so-called "rules".

Among our favourite themes was a puzzle where the only vowel in the diagram was E. During the Arab Spring, we had one where all 22 countries of the Arab League appeared in the clues -- "because we could", as you mighthaveput it.

That must be HERACLES, by Zeus. Snake-stranglingly good. Many thanks to Hot and Trazom, and I hope we'll chat again soon about transatlantic differences. Reader, do you ever mix it up with exotic foreign fare?